School’s officially out for summer at Kyle University.
The 7-foot muscle-head has spent the last four weeks making the rounds on social media, accruing more than 60 million views and 30,000 Instagram followers and becoming the manosphere’s latest “high-value” poster boy. His Tate brothers-esque content — built around seducing women, “looksmaxxing” and collecting “aura points” — swiftly got him banned from TikTok.
But it turns out, Kyle’s entire red-pill brand is actually just some savvy film publicity.
The Hollywood Reporter can reveal that the costumed “manosphere recruiters” galavanting around the industry’s most renowned studios and offices across Los Angeles and London this week are indeed the finale act of this viral sensation. All along, Kyle University has been an anti-manosphere satirical campaign using social media as an elaborate Trojan horse to draw Hollywood’s attention to Impressionable, the debut film from 22-year-old British director Noah Caplan.
Kyle, the faux character and self-proclaimed “lion in a world of dolphins” (played by U.S. bodybuilder Mike O’Hearn), has captured Instagram, YouTube and Facebook users. He’s fooled a sizable chunk of the manosphere, including several well-known red-pill commentators who hurled abuse at feminist creators Izzy Taffs and Maia Wall.
Since Caplan’s elaborate bit went live, studios and talent reps swept in to express interest — momentum that the young filmmaker wanted to jump on. The bait-and-switch culminated in a stunt outside major entertainment hubs in Los Angeles and London on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Kyles have popped up, enrollment papers in hand, pitching a made-up online course to top executives outside the likes of the BBC, Lionsgate, the British Film Institute, UTA, Working Title, WME, Channel 4, and major streamers. On the L.A. hit list was Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment, where a Kyle asked security if he could “talk to the Ken in charge.” The targets are hand-picked by Caplan as his “dream collaborators” on Impressionable — from Warner Bros. Clockwork division to U.K. distributor True Brit — which is currently seeking packaging, financing and distribution.
A slew of young, digital talent coming up through the ranks of social media were enlisted for the stunt. Comedians Rufus Rice, Auden Barnes (“UncleBenMyBrudda”), Tommy Solemn, “Toshua,” “Panchbantz” and Ben McGuinness all appeared as various manosphere characters across the campaign, with some of them even playing the Kyle University recruits this week.
Another Kyle hands out leaflets outside the BBC.
Courtesy of YOOF
Inside the leaflets flung at reception desks and staff was a heartfelt pitch from Caplan about Impressionable, a satirical coming-of-age comedy-drama following a teenage boy’s idolization of a manosphere influencer, which manifests as a fictional mentor. The feature aims to “tackle toxic masculinity while positively spotlighting the real, everyday men who actually shape a young boy’s life.”
Caplan, who founded his own talent management agency YOOF, has no inherited network or contacts in the film industry. At 17, he persuaded British star Danny Dyer to star in his 30-minute mental health awareness drama (later acquired by ITV) by DM’ing hundreds of the actor’s friends on social media. THR caught up with Caplan about talking Dyer into the film last year, where he elaborated on getting his film education through YouTube, Curry Barker and Kane Parsons-style.
He gave up on cold-emailing studios about Impressionable and decided to get more creative. “I was always going to find a way, even if it took another three years,” Caplan tells THR. “What we’ve built with Kyle University though is a stronger pitch than any email I could ever have sent.”
“Kyle is bait, and that’s the whole point. We’ve replicated the manosphere’s entire ecosystem with a character who’s dangerous yet entertaining. You could stumble on a harmless clip of this douchey frat-bro, find it funny, and hit follow. It might not be until a few posts in that his real agenda creeps in: the misogyny, the bigotry, the peddling of self-hatred for profit.”
Caplan, however, is careful not to mock the young men who fall for it.
Kyle (Mike O’Hearn, left) and ‘Impressionable’ director Noah Caplan.
Courtesy of YOOF
“We’re not here to vilify the audience who get pulled in,” he says about his captive audience. “I’ve had mates pulled in, and some of it even skimmed close to me in the most vulnerable moments of my own adolescence. But hopefully Impressionable can expose that mad old monopoly, and show young men there’s a more whimsical way to figure out who you are, without leaning on some parasocial stranger to tell you who that is.”
Caplan admits the stunt was “cheeky.” He continued: “We want our project noticed by the industry we admire so greatly. Coming from Essex, England, there aren’t too many talent scouts or film and TV power-brokers hanging around. Emails get ignored, cold calls are outdated and annoying. We thought this could not just get us in front of the right people, but also generate a bit of fun in such a madly busy town for a couple of days.”
And if nothing else, he hopes it brightened a few people’s Tuesday or Wednesday.
Says Caplan: “For the executives […] coming face-to-face with a 7ft, 300lb man in neon headbands and multi-colored bicep tassels might just be the midweek pick-me-up they needed. I hope it caught people’s interest, or at least intrigued them. And if not, I hope we managed to entertain a few people on their daily commute.”
